Monday, October 01, 2018

Channing Dungey is a failure


 
spca




"TV: MURPHY BROWN was bad but Channing Dungey's far worse" (Ava and C.I., THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW):
And that's another problem with this show.  Murphy abused her assistants.  Who wants to watch that today?

Certainly not the people at ABC.

Not the ones working for Extreme Bitch Channing Dungey.

They can take comfort in the prospect that Channing's days continue to dwindle.

She may be throwing even more things at the walls of her office and abusing her assistant -- ABC better get her ass to H.R. damn quick because two suits have had it with her bitchery and say it's enough to get her fired -- but it's the drama at the end of the storm.

See, bad news for bitches, GREY'S ANATOMY's debut was soft and the network itself, ABC, it's 27.5% lower in terms of ratings last week than the same week the year before.

That's not success.  MODERN FAMILY, on Wednesday night, launched its new season -- with approximately two million less viewers than last year.

Channing fired Roseanne Barr.  She did so without the consent of the shareholders or the board.  She just made a unilateral decision (which, some say, was based upon the fact that her looks have been called "simian" before so she didn't like Roseanne's joke about Planet of the Apes and War Criminal Valerie Jarrett).  That would have been fine if ABC were a taco stand that Channing ran or her own tax service.

But ABC is a media conglomerate.  It is huge business.

And Channing decided all by herself that she was going to fire Roseanne -- the star of ABC's hit program.  Because of a Tweet.

Channing took it upon herself to pretend that she was playing with her own money when, in fact, it was house money.

She never should have fired Roseanne.  Having fired Roseanne, she should have immediately told the cast -- who were all going to be paid for season two whether it was filmed or not -- "Do not say anything because we may do a season without Roseanne."

She didn't do that which led to the ridiculous Sara Gilbert trashing Roseanne in public -- trashing the woman who saved Sara's job for years when ABC wanted to fire Sara because Sara was a lesbian.  But there's no loyalty, so Sara tore into Roseanne publicly.

After that, Channing finally got the idea for a sitcom with all of the cast except Roseanne (one of us, the day Roseanne was fired, noted the show could continue without her -- that Channing didn't realize  that until weeks later goes to how stupid she is).  Too late.  Sara's public bitchery has harmed the show as much as Roseanne's firing.  She should never have been allowed to make the remarks that she did.

But Roseanne should never have been fired.  She Tweeted.  She Tweeted a bad joke.  If it was too much for the audiences, then that would become evident in the fall when the show returned.

Let the audience decide.

That was too much for Channing.  She wanted to pretend that she owned ABC when, in fact, she worked for ABC.  Or she's supposed to work for ABC.  Nothing she's doing right now warrants a pay check.  It does demand a pink slip.


Oh, and did we mention LAST MAN STANDING debuted on FOX last Friday?  And it had more viewers than MURPHY BROWN.


Why is it on FOX again?  Oh, that's right Channing cancelled it.  It was the highest rated scripted half-hour show ABC had.  But Channing cancelled it.  Another great decision by her, right?

It goes to why she's abusing her assistant and her underlings and why she's having screaming fits in her office and cursing out subordinates in the sort of langague that -- pay attention, Channing -- should result in being fired.

CBS knew before MURPHY BROWN aired that it was a turkey.  They also knew they only had to put up with 13 episodes.  Sadly, ABC has to put up with a lot more from Channing.  Sad for ABC stockholders, she's going to ruin the network a lot more before she finally gets fired.

ABC needs to fire that hideous Channing Dungey.  She is destroying the ratings of ABC.  They have nothing to brag about this season.  She took an axe to ROSEANNE by firing Roseanne Barr and that was the network's biggest show.

Having done that, it was incumbent on her to show up this fall with some outstanding programming choices that would pull in viewers.

She failed.  She is a failure.  Fire her.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Monday, October 1, 2018. The KRG held elections and much more.

Let's start with some good news.  Neera Tanden finally found the man of her political dreams.  For years, people would caution her, "Neera, be practical.  You're just not impressive enough to land Satan."  But Neera had her heart set on being the First Lady in Hell and now, thanks to her merger with Bill Kristol, she's as close to that position as she's ever been.  Caitlin Johnstone (CONSORTIUM NEWS) reports:

  In a conference at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, “Resistance” leader and professional left-puncher Neera Tanden met with Iraq-raping neocon Bill Kristol to discuss bipartisanship and shared values. While leprechauns held hands and danced beneath candy rainbows and gumdrop Reaper drones, the duo engaged in a friendly, playful conversation with the event’s host in a debate format which was not unlike watching the Pillsbury Doughboy have a pillow fight with himself in a padded room after drinking a bottle of NyQuil.
To get the event started, the host whose name I refuse to learn asked the pair to discuss briefly what common ground such wildly different people could possibly share to make such a strange taboo-shattering dialogue possible.
“Issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to foreign policy,” replied Tanden. “And opposing authoritarianism, and opposing the kind of creeping populism that undermines democracy itself.”
Neera Tanden, in case you are unaware, is a longtime Clinton and Obama insider and CEO of the plutocrat-backed think tank Center for American Progress. Her emails featured prominently in the 2016 Podesta drops by WikiLeaks, which New Republic described as revealing “a pattern of freezing out those who don’t toe the line, a disturbing predilection for someone who is a kind of gatekeeper for what ideas are acceptable in Democratic politics.” Any quick glance at Tanden’s political activism and Twitter presence will render this unsurprising, as she often seems more concerned with attacking the Green Party and noncompliant progressive Democrats than she does with 
advancing progressive values. Her entire life is dedicated to keeping what passes for America’s political left out of the hands of the American populace.
Kristol co-signed Tanden’s anti-populist rhetoric and her open endorsement of neoconservative foreign policy, and went on to say that another thing he and Tanden have in common is that they’ve both served in government, which makes you realize that nothing’s black and white and everything’s kinda nebulous and amorphous so it doesn’t really matter if you, say for example, help deceive your country into a horrific blunder that ends up killing a whole lot of people for no good reason.


Following the above PDA, Tanden and Kristol are said to have retired to the two-star American Inn & Suites in Orange, California -- the cheapest accommodations near Yorba Linda and the Richard Nixon War Criminal Library and Museum -- which is where the two-some plan to hold both their reception and their first animal sacrifice.  Remember, boys and girls, the happy couple is registered at fetish stores near you.

Not sure whether The Problem From Hell Samantha Power was the couple's matron of honor or their handmaid, but she did crawl out from under her rock to Tweet.

 4 minutes ago
You mean like you guys with Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Maidan, Kosovo...
Russia likes sovereignty, except that of Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, the United Kingdom, the United States...
1 reply10 retweets33 likes
 
 




I guess he told her.  I don't think people have laughed so hard at Samantha Power since those wedding photos.

Meanwhile, the KRG held elections Sunday.

 4 hours ago
Draw media's approximate breakdown of the seats the political parties gained in 30 September : 40-42, 21-23, 11-13, New Generation: 7-9, : 7-8, 5-6.
3 retweets14 likes
 
 




Like their hero and former leader, the party of Jalal Talabani just can't get it up which is why the PUK still can't come in first place.  If the results hold, this will be an improvement over third place to Gorran but long gone are the days when Kurds flocked to the Talabani's PUK.  Not even 80% of the votes have been counted so these numbers are not complete and things remain fluid.  KDP spokespeople are stating that they have 45 seats but, again, these numbers can change.  The results thus far appear to have sent Gorran into silence.


  1.  5 hours ago
movement’s media expressed their joy after the polls ended and counting started, claiming that they have gained a big victory, but later they stopped covering results when they found out they were wrong.
1 like
 
 



Talabani hand-puppet Joel Wing looks at the early results and the KDP having won twice the seats as the PUK to insist that this means "the KDP - PUK domination" will continue.  The results thus far indicate only KDP domination.


  1.  4 hours ago
: Latest result on the Kurdistan Region's Parliamentary Election For updates, follow here:
1 reply4 retweets16 likes
 
 




Only the anti-Barzani nut job Joel Wing could look at the current results and see good news for Talabani's PUK.  Some early results are showing the KDP with 46% of the votes and the PUK with 17%.  The PUK is not dominating anything.  That's why they started their usual crap of "voter fraud!" before the UN told them to knock it off.  Joel Wing has been either an idiot or a liar when it comes to the KRG repeatedly.  Wasn't it 2012 when he was telling us that Massoud Barzani had lost all support?  Bless crazy Joel Wing and the corporate press that props his tired ass up.



This morning on NPR's MORNING EDITION, Jane Arraf was hitting the crack pipe as she insisted
"the interesting thing is there are opposition parties."  She then goes on to call Gorran an older party.  Gorran, created by CIA seed-money does not have a long history.  "We did not see a lot of people," Arraf insisted of the one polling place that they went to in the morning and stayed all day.  It's really great that she can go to one polling place out of all the polling places in the three provinces -- not "regions," NPR -- and feels she can extrapolate from there.

Extrapolate?  I'm being kind and using it in place of "lying."

Jane always speaks for the prime minister -- whomever that is.  So this is a really hard time for her as Hayder al-Abadi is supposed to be on his way out and no one has emerged yet to be considered the new prime minister.  Poor, Jane.  It was so much easier when she was at CNN and could just broadcast whatever Saddam Hussein wanted her to.

One thing that is known about the elections yesterday:




  1.  57 minutes ago
's [journalist who was assassinated in 2013 in Kalar] widow Shirin Amin, will be a new MP of faction at the parliament. .
2 retweets11 likes
 
 





Yesterday, Isaiah's "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Barbra Clones" and "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Hogwarts" and Kat's  "Kat's Korner: Ann Wilson sings of and for the boys" and  "Kat's Korner: Cher gives us another classic" went up.  New content at THIRD:



Posted by at

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Eric London gets straight to the point

Okay, first up, check out these two items at THE COMMON ILLS:

  • Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Hogwarts"
  • Kat's Korner: Ann Wilson sings of and for the boys

    • They went up this morning.

    Guess what?

    In about an hour and a half, Kat will have another music piece up there -- a review of Cher's new album.  Isaiah?  He'll have at least one more comic up at the site today (probably late tonight -- it's funny too -- it's -- spoiler -- Barbra Streisand).

    So check the two that are up out right now and look for the two that are coming up.

    This is Eric London (WSWS):

    After nearly nine hours of Senate testimony by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, the public is no closer to knowing what did or did not happen over thirty years ago, when Ford alleges Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. Kavanaugh’s future as the nominee now depends on the outcome of an FBI investigation to which Senate Republicans agreed on Friday.
    The allegations of sexual assault have become the sole issue in Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and the Democratic Party and the media have presented Kavanaugh’s guilt on this matter as a foregone conclusion. The focus of the proceedings reflects the political priorities of the Democratic Party and the interests of the affluent social layers to which it is appealing.
    There are some who, though uncomfortable with the abrogation of the presumption of innocence that is characteristic of the Democrats’ treatment of the sexual assault allegations, are eager to seize on any opportunity to keep Kavanaugh off the court. The ends, as the saying goes, supposedly justify the means. They should be warned: This is bad politics, bad strategy and even worse tactics. There are political consequences to such efforts to confuse and cover up the real issues confronting the working class.
    A central aim of the Democrats’ strategy in the Kavanaugh hearings has been to obscure the most important class issues. They adopt the tone of phony moral outrage over the three-decade-old allegation while expressing no similar anger or even concern over the crimes committed by the American ruling class throughout the world.

    Not a day goes by where the US military is not dropping bombs or launching drone strikes, with the death toll from the “war on terror” well over one million. Thirteen thousand immigrant children are currently locked up in internment camps. Thousands of workers in the US die each year from industrial accidents and work-related illnesses. When Democratic Senator Cory Booker complains about the “patriarchy,” he looks past the fact that the fall in life expectancy in the working class is largely driven by alcoholism, drug abuse and depression among men.

    Exactly.


    "Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
    Friday, September 28, 2018.  As the death and dying continues in Iraq, count on the lying of Barbra Streisand to cover up for War Criminals. 



    Cher's version of "The Winner Takes It All" from her new album (released today) DANCING QUEEN.   Cher's an important musical voice.  Margaret Kimberley's an important voice for justice.  Kollibri terre Sonnenblume (COUNTERPUNCH) interviews Margaret:


    Kollibri terre Sonnenblume: How do you react when people are like – as some political scientists recently said– that Trump is the, quote, “worst president ever.”
    Margaret Kimberley: It means they don’t like him. That’s all it means. “Worst” based on what? Did he invade another country? I mean, look at what they’ve done. How they’ve rehabilitated George Bush. Depending on which number you believe, he killed a minimum of half a million people in Iraq. Maybe one million. But Trump is worse? Now maybe before he leaves office he’ll do something equally as horrible, but he’s certainly not worst right now.


    It's called perspective and it's lacking when the likes of Barbra Streisand take time out from shopping in their own personal malls and cloning their dogs to try to be 'political.'  They say stupid things that reveal how shallow and pathetic their lives are, stupid things like Colin Powell is "decent people."  Sorry, I'm not in the mood for some ugly bitch like Barbra Streisand -- who has no formal education and no practical education (go back to speaking of Zen Buddhism, Babsie), thinking she can rewrite history.

    While she was doing MEET THE FOCKERS or whatever other abortion she called a film, the rest of us were dealing with the liar Colin Powell.  Here's Norman Solomon in 2005:

    Powell’s televised U.N. speech exuded great confidence and authoritative judgment. But he owed much of his touted credibility to the fact that he had long functioned inside a media bubble shielding him from direct challenge. It might puzzle an American to read later, in a book compiled by the London-based Guardian, that Powell’s much-ballyhooed speech went over like a lead balloon. “The presentation was long on assertion and muffled taped phone calls, but short on killer facts,” the book said. “It fell flat.”
    Fell flat? Well it did in Britain, where a portion of the mainstream press immediately set about engaging in vigorous journalism that ripped apart many of Powell’s assertions within days. But not on the western side of the Atlantic, where Powell’s star turn at the United Nations elicited an outpouring of media adulation. In the process of deference to Powell, many liberals were among the swooners.
    In her Washington Post column the morning after Powell spoke, Mary McGrory proclaimed that “he persuaded me.” She wrote: “The cumulative effect was stunning.” And McGrory, a seasoned and dovish political observer, concluded: “I’m not ready for war yet. But Colin Powell has convinced me that it might be the only way to stop a fiend, and that if we do go, there is reason.”
    In the same edition, Post columnist Richard Cohen shared his insight that Powell was utterly convincing: “The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without
    a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.”
    Inches away, Post readers found Jim Hoagland’s column with this lead:
    Colin Powell did more than present the world with a convincing and detailed X-ray of Iraq’s secret weapons and terrorism programs yesterday. He also exposed the enduring bad faith of several key members of the U.N. Security Council when it comes to Iraq and its “web of lies,” in Powell’s phrase.
    Hoagland’s closing words sought to banish doubt: “To continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most serious statement he will ever make, or was taken in by manufactured evidence. I don’t believe that. Today, neither should you.”
    On the opposite page the morning after Powell’s momentous U.N. speech, a Washington Post editorial was figuratively on the same page as the Post columnists. Under the headline “Irrefutable,” the newspaper laid down its line for rationality: “After Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security
    Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.”
    Also smitten was the editorial board of the most influential U.S. newspaper leaning against the push for war. Hours after Powell finished his U.N. snow job, the New York Times published an editorial with a mollified tone — declaring that he “presented the United Nations and a global television audience yesterday with the most
    powerful case to date that Saddam Hussein stands in defiance of Security Council resolutions and has no intention of revealing or surrendering whatever unconventional weapons he may have.”
    By sending Powell to address the Security Council, the Times claimed, President Bush “showed a wise concern for international opinion.” And the paper contended that “Mr. Powell’s presentation was all the more convincing because he dispensed with apocalyptic invocations of a struggle of good and evil and focused on shaping a sober, factual case against Mr. Hussein’s regime.”
    Later, in mid-September 2003, straining to justify Washington’s refusal to let go of the occupation of Iraq, Colin Powell used the language of a venture capitalist: “Since the United States and its coalition partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial resources, as well as the lives of our young men and women — and we have a large force there now — we can’t be expected to suddenly just step aside.”
    Now, after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the entire U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can’t bring himself to stand up and account for his crucial role. Instead, he’s leaving it to a former aide to pin blame on those who remain at the top of the Bush administration. But Powell was an integral part of the war propaganda

    machinery. And we can hardly expect the same media outlets that puffed him up at crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual history.


    It is hilarious that the cross-eyed Barbra is pimping a song about hating lies and liars while she's also insisting that Colin Powell is a decent person.  He's a f**king liar who is responsible for the deaths of millions.  He lied to the United Nations, he knew he was lying.  He lied to get the country into war.  You can also check out Ava and my "TV Review: Barbara and Colin remake The Way We Were" from 2005 and I'd suggest you look into the late Robert Parry's work on this topic as well (there should be at least one link to Parry in Ava and my piece).  There's no need for lies and if Barbra wants to fight lies she can start by stop lying herself.  Cheap whore, that's all she ever was, it's all she's ever been.  She's molested her own talent in such a way that she's produced the most mediocre career anyone could imagine.  That's bad.  But pimping Colin Powell as "decent"?  After that lying speech?  Babs needs to go back to cloning her dead dog and other things that fat-assed, ridiculous and wealthy women do when they've got no real life or connection to one.

    Last February, Jon Schwarz (INTERCEPT) examined Colin's selling of the war:

    COLIN POWELL DELIVERED his presentation making the case for war with Iraq at the United Nations 15 years ago, on February 5, 2003.
    As much criticism as Powell received for this — he’s called it “painful” and something that will “always be a part of my record” — it hasn’t been close to what’s justified. Powell, who was secretary of state under President George W. Bush, was much more than just horribly mistaken: He fabricated “evidence” and ignored repeated warnings that what he was saying was false.
    Unfortunately, Congress never investigated Powell’s use of the intelligence he was given, so we don’t know many of the specifics. Even so, what did reach the public record in other ways is extremely damning. While the corporate media has never taken a close look at this record, we can go through Powell’s presentation line by line to demonstrate the chasm between what he knew and what he told the world. As you’ll see, there’s quite a lot to say about it.

    Jon goes through the speech point by point.  If you're stupid enough to believe a hagged out fool who is so addicted to fillers that she now has chipmunk cheeks, you really should read through Jon's report.  And you should grasp that Colin Powell is a War Criminal and that pre-dates Iraq.

     21 Apr 2016
    Replying to 
    The Queen knighted US war criminal Colin Powell who covered up the My Lai Massacre.
    11 replies501 retweets213 likes





    1.  7 Apr 2011
    Colin Powell: This Man is a War Criminal! http://nblo.gs/gnqg2
    5 retweets2 likes





    Barbra doesn't like liars?  She keeps forgetting to note that she has a financial interest in the remake of A STAR IS BORN.  Her ex-lover Jon Peters can't promote the film.  Too many women have come out to talk about how he harassed and raped them.  So Warner Brothers really needs Barbra to talk it up.  She doesn't like liars?  All these interviews praising A STAR IS BORN that never manage to mention that Babs has a financial interest in the project?  That's called deception.  There's no whore like an old whore.


    B-b-b-ut Barbra's a defender of women.

    She's a defender of herself.  She's a self-promoter.  She practices the same Me-ism as Hillary Clinton and tries to pass it off as feminism.

    Real feminists care aren't cloning their pets.  Real feminists speak out for women.  The women in Iraq who have taken part in the protests have risked a great deal.

    Barbra doesn't care about them.  They don't buy her bad albums or see her tacky films.

    They risk everything and Barbra can't highlight them.


     21 hours ago
    Four Iraqi Women (Activists) killed in less than a month in Iraq! All were killed in broad daylight.

    7 replies212 retweets174 likes


    Show this thread


    Four women.  Killed in broad daylight.  For the 'crime' of protesting.  For the 'crime' of demanding drinkable water that doesn't land you in the hospital, electricity (150 degrees Fahrenheit was not uncommon in Basra this summer) and jobs.

    Hayder al-Abadi, still prime minister of Iraq at this point, shut down the internet in July to try to keep the world from finding out what was going on.

    Why did he even bother?

    In a world of cross-eyed Barbras, there's no need.  They will waste our time with tacky and banal topics, distracting us from what matters.



    1.  36 minutes ago
    How many lives have been lost since the start of the bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria?
    2 replies21 retweets14 likes





    The Iraqi people are suffering -- they are suffering in the 15th year of an illegal war.  But 'activist' Barbra Streisand doesn't care.  She's never cared.  She's wasted her talents and she's wasted the world's time.  If the rumors are true that James Brolin is using a 'high class' service to cheat on her are true, no one's going to shed a tear for Barbra.  The world has passed her by.  She's obsolete and soon to be forgotten.  Real issues matter, fat cats like Babs, not so much.

     4 hours ago
    Just in a month show their new national unity. Few days ago political class shocked by protests acts in , yesterday Iraqis are unite against killer & instigator of Iraqi female model Tara Faris, while political class still ignore these developments of society (1)

    1 reply3 retweets9 likes


    Show this thread


    AL ARABYIA reports:

     An Iraqi social media star became the latest woman victim of a spate of murders across the country this week by unknown gunmen.

    Tara Fares was shot dead in her car in the capital Baghdad on Thursday, just a day after she was voted one of Iraq's most popular social media stars.

    She was murdered by unknown gunmen in the Kam Sara neighbourhood of Baghdad, with the ministry of interior saying they are investigating the killing

    The model and journalist had a huge following on Istagram, with over 2 million followers.



    The Iraqi people suffer.  In part, they suffer because the US government did not intend to ever provide democracy.  They wanted disorder and chaos.  See Naomi Klein's "Baghdad Year Zero" (HARPER'S):


    The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.

    Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are applied to various parts of the body simultaneously subjects are rendered so confused about where the pain is coming from that they become incapable of resistance. A declassified CIA "Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up "an interval – which may be extremely brief - of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis ... At this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply." A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy, or "shock treatment," the ugly term used to describe the rapid implementation of free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto Pinochet's coup. The theory is that if painful economic "adjustments" are brought in rapidly and in the aftermath of a seismic social disruption like a war, a coup, or a government collapse, the population will be so stunned, and so preoccupied with the daily pressures of survival, that it too will go into suspended animation, unable to resist. As Pinochet's finance minister, Admiral Lorenzo Gotuzzo, declared, "The dog's tail must be cut off in one chop."

    That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in keeping with the belief that private companies are more suited than governments for virtually every task, the White House decided to privatize the task of privatizing Iraq's state-dominated economy. Two months before the war began, USAID began drafting a work order, to be handed out to a private company, to oversee Iraq's "transition to a sustainable market-driven economic system." The document states that the winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG offshoot Bearing Pint) will take "appropriate advantage of the unique opportunity for rapid progress in this area presented by the current configuration of political circumstances." Which is precisely what happened. L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, "Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport." But before the fires from the "shock and awe" military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer's reforms as "an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world."

    The tone of Bremer's tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country's borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was "open for business."

    One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq's non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. "Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands," he said, "is essential for Iraq's economic recovery." It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    But Bremer's economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq's corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein's economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.

    If these policies sound familiar, it's because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.

    At first, the shock-therapy theory seemed to hold: Iraqis, reeling from violence both military and economic, were far too busy staying alive to mount a political response to Bremer's campaign. Worrying about the privatization of the sewage system was an unimaginable luxury with half the population lacking access to clean drinking water; the debate over the flat tax would have to wait until the lights were back on. Even in the international press, Bremer's new laws, though radical, were easily upstaged by more dramatic news of political chaos and rising crime.

    Some people were paying attention, of course. That autumn was awash in "rebuilding Iraq" trade shows, in Washington, London, Madrid, and Amman. The Economist described Iraq under Bremer as "a capitalist dream," and a flurry of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager. "Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine," one of the company's partners enthused. "One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country."

    Soon there were rumors that a McDonald's would be opening up in downtown Baghdad, funding was almost in place for a Starwood luxury hotel, and General Motors was planning to build an auto plant. On the financial side, HSBC would have branches all over the country, Citigroup was preparing to offer substantial loans guaranteed against future sales of Iraqi oil, and the bell was going to ring on a New York-style stock exchange in Baghdad any day.

    In only a few months, the postwar plan to turn Iraq into a laboratory for the neocons had been realized. Leo Strauss may have provided the intellectual framework for invading Iraq preemptively, but it was that other University of Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, author of the anti-government manifesto Capitalism and Freedom, who supplied the manual for what to do once the country was safely in America's hands. This represented an enormous victory for the most ideological wing of the Bush Administration. But it was also something more: the culmination of two interlinked power struggles, one among Iraqi exiles advising the White House on its postwar strategy, the other within the White House itself.

    As the British historian Dilip Hiro has shown, in Secrets and Lies: Operation 'Iraqi Freedom' and After, the Iraqi exiles pushing for the invasion were divided, broadly, into two camps. On one side were "the pragmatists," who favored getting rid of Saddam and his immediate entourage, securing access to oil, and slowly introducing free-market reforms. Many of these exiles were part of the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, which generated a thirteen-volume report on how to restore basic services and transition to democracy after the war. On the other side was the "Year Zero" camp, those who believed that Iraq was so contaminated that it needed to be rubbed out and remade from scratch. The prime advocate of the pragmatic approach was Iyad Allawi, a former high-level Baathist who fell out with Saddam and started working for the CIA. The prime advocate of the Year Zero approach was Ahmad Chalabi, whose hatred of the Iraqi state for expropriating his family's assets during the 1958 revolution ran so deep he longed to see the entire country burned to the ground - everything, that is, but the Oil Ministry, which would be the nucleus of the new Iraq, the cluster of cells from which an entire nation would grow. He called this process "de-Baathification." 


    Goons were put in place by the US government to sew chaos and destruction so that the shocked people couldn't fight back.  Not just by the US.  Basra was fighting back -- and would win concessions.  Around this time, we had what happening?  Oh, those Muslim fanatics, remember?  The ones who attacked on September 19, 2005?

    Remember?

    Those Mulsim fanatics who were, in fact, British.  They were British citizens, not Iraqis.  British Special Air Service soldiers, remember?  They just dressed up to try to pass themselves off as Arabs when they launched the attack on Basra.

    From Sabrina Tavernise's "British Army Storms Basra Jail to Free 2 Soldiers From Arrest" (NEW YORK TIMES):


    Two British soldiers working under cover were arrested Monday in the southern city of Basra and then freed as a British armored vehicle blasted through the wall of their jail after an angry crowd began rioting outside, an Interior Ministry official said.
    The official said that the soldiers were undercover officers dressed as Iraqis and that Iraqi police officers had arrested them after the men fired at a traffic police officer.
    A British military spokesman in Basra confirmed that "two U.K. military personnel" had been detained early on Monday "in a shooting incident" and that troops had used an armored fighting vehicle "to gain entry" to the police station to release them. He said that more than one vehicle had been in the area and that the police inside the station had refused to obey orders from the Interior Ministry to release the men.
    The incident came a day after British forces in Basra arrested three members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the rebellious Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, on suspicion of terrorism.


    For those who marvel over the fact that THE TIMES covered it -- and that others did as well -- please note that the occupying forces -- including the British -- were whispered to be part of the campaign killing journalists in Basra.  Was it true, was it paranoia?  I have no idea.  But THE NEW YORK TIMES losing one of their own (Fakher Haider) at exactly the same time -- a murder that has never been solved -- was said to have motivated Tavernise's piece making it into print.

    Attacking journalists in Iraq was never a minor issue.  Recently, the 'resistance' and its ilk have insisted that journalists risk their lives in Iraq and should be supported.  Huh?  The Debra Messings want you not to call their beloved "fake news."  But here's reality, the US attacked journalists publicly on April 8, 2003 when they attacked the Palestine Hotel.  Enough time -- and enough administrations -- have passed that you'd think the us press could be as honest as the world's press about what actually happened there.

    This was never about democracy or liberation.  This was an illegal war that remains illegal.  The US government doesn't want to help Iraq, it wants to control it.  And they're okay -- the US government -- with Iraqis dying and thugs being in charge.

    But, look, over there, it's Barbra Streisand's fat ass distracting us all again.

    The following community sites -- plus DISSIDENT VOICE --  updated:




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